The Internet is increasingly being used to transmit, store, view and share media files. These media files are sometimes short (e.g., two minutes or less) and sometimes much longer (e.g., several hours). The number of media files available to a user on the Internet is growing at an increasing rate. Therefore, the number of options a user of the Internet has when viewing media files is also growing at this increasing rate. A user may be exposed to more media files than he or she has time to experience and may wish to know in which portions of media files he or she will likely be most interested.
However, with current media players it is difficult and inefficient to find specific portions of media items that a user may be interested in. For example, DVD menus provide a predetermined chapter-type listing of the content of a media item, but if a user does not know in which chapter the desired content appeared, the user must still search through the entire media item. When searching using fast forward commands, the potential remains that the user may not recognize the desired material and skip over it multiple times before finally finding and identifying the desired content.